37 Bizarre National Dishes That Might Make Your Stomach Churn Just Looking At Them

It all started, as often happens in such cases, in the AskReddit community, where the user u/imadgalaxyx once asked the netizens: "What's the most bizarre dish from your country?" The original poster is American, so they offered their own take on the dish for the US: the Rocky Mountain Oysters.

In fact, “these aren't oysters, but rather deep-fried bull testicles,” the thread starter noted, along with a photo of the dish itself, which actually looks quite appetizing. Well, it seems the author has opened a true Pandora's box, because the thread currently has over 2.4K upvotes and around 2.6K various comments featuring the most insane foods from all over the world, as well as the debate about these meals.

The selection we've put together for you includes both tried-and-true "veterans" of similar lists, like surströmming, pemmican, and fried insects, and something completely unexpected, like deep-fried pizza from Scotland. Well, if you're Italian and consider pineapple on pizza absolutely barbaric, how about this?

In fact, globalization in recent decades has accomplished at least one great, unobvious thing. It has blended the cultural traditions of many countries, taken culinary recipes seemingly hopelessly lost in history, and brought them to the surface. Along the way, it has transformed them in ways that even the natives wouldn't recognize.

On the other hand, our selection largely consists of dishes from nations for whom it was originally more of a kind of survival food. For example, surströmming or pemmican were once a way for people of the Far North to preserve food for the future. After all, catching, say, a walrus was a rare luck for them, so preserving meat in such an exotic way became a matter of survival for the entire tribe.

Over time, the digestive system and the entire body of people in these tribes and nations adapted to the regular consumption of toxins, making them less poisonous. At the same time, many Arctic explorers wrote in their memoirs about how even a small morsel of these northern "delicacies" could prove tragically for reckless Europeans or Americans.

And today, what was once a matter of human survival has become, in many ways, simply a bizarre gastronomic whim. We marvel at strange recipes, sometimes forgetting that these "weird foods" actually saved thousands of lives during cold, snowy winters...

In general, the very concept of "strange food," according to many researchers, emerged only in the 19th century, when cultures across the globe began to actively interpenetrate. And, of course, the role of literature in this process should not be underestimated.

While previously, a traveler visiting, say, France, wouldn't have been particularly surprised to find snails or frogs' legs being eaten there, the widespread availability of cookbooks and travelogues in the 19th century popularized an ironic appreciation of what the authors considered "strange."

For example, one only needs to read Mark Twain's "The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress" to begin to realize why we perceive other people's oddities with such irony. After all, the great American writer was simply describing a journey through Europe, while far greater cultural and culinary discoveries and surprises would've awaited him in Asia or Africa!

Be that as it may, every nation has its own dish that sooner or later even its natives ask, "What is that, and why should we eat it?" So, if you, too, have a similar dish in your memory and are willing to share your own story of facing it or even eating it, please welcome to the comments!

Well, and if you just came here to enjoy reading or find a unique recipe for the evening, then we sincerely hope you'll achieve your goal too. After all, if you, our dear readers, skim through this list with attention and pleasure, what more could we wish for?